


Scorched

by truc



Series: Burnt [2]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, Batman Beyond, DCU, DCU (Comics)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Dick Grayson's pov, Estranged Relationship, Family, Gen, Gotham, Introspection, Old Bruce, Old Dick, Stream of Consciousness, Terry McGinnis is Batman, and he's getting married, mentor, nostalgic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-06
Updated: 2020-12-06
Packaged: 2021-03-10 04:54:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,086
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27908566
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/truc/pseuds/truc
Summary: When the new Batman (Terry McGinnis) gets married, Dick Grayson is called out of retirement to patrol the city he could never really leave behind.Standalone fic.
Relationships: Dick Grayson & Bruce Wayne
Series: Burnt [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2043655
Kudos: 20





	Scorched

**Author's Note:**

> There's a first part to this series, however, the only things you need to know is that Terry McGinnis (the new Batman) decided to get married and Dick's and Bruce's relationship is at an awful place.

Dick jumped under various circumstances. Trapeze. Rooftops. Chandeliers. Cliffs. Spacecrafts. The rush had always felt the same. He'd felt alive. Especially if he was falling to his death.

Dick waited to the last moment to catch himself. Nightwing had not been out in a while.

It wasn't a weakness he wanted to continue. This was only a favour.

_Lie._

Dick missed the adrenaline rush that put an end to his unsavoury thoughts.

 _Flying rhymes with Dying._ He smiled. Bullies once taunted him with that ridiculous rhyme. "Birds are supposed to fly, my little Robin," his mother used to say. And Dick dived and flew, flapping his wings at the last second only.

He let his thoughts collide with each other, growing stronger with each reverberation. He'd never understood why he would clear his thoughts other than to undermine a villain's scheme. Thoughts were friends when you were alone; they were conversations when lonely. He once thought it was normal.

Dick fell again, wind teasing him gently like a friend. Terry and his fancy suit couldn't feel this. Dick vaulted himself up.

Dick stopped atop the rooftop and surveyed neo-Gotham. Ugliness was still its staple. Yet, Bruce loved this place.

He frowned. It was hard not to think of Bruce even when he didn't want to, maybe especially so.

Bruce had always been larger than life. Avoiding him for decades had not rendered him smaller. He could feel his thought go around the subject and bringing it back, inevitably so.

Terry was getting married tonight. _Good for him._ Maybe he could extricate himself from the spiderweb spun by the emotionally imbalanced Bruce.

Who was Dick kidding? Once Bruce entered your life, you could never erase the poison's lingering effects.

Jump City. Blüdhaven. Harley Circus.

He'd made a nest out of all of them. None ever lasted. Migration always dragged him back to Gotham's madness.

Now, at least, he wasn't ashamed of that fact. He wasn't born in the Narrows like Jay; nor was he born in the outskirts like Bruce and Tim; nor was he born in the middle-class centre of Gotham like Barbara. Dick's blood stirred for nomadism. His parents, his grandparents and his great-grandparents travelled the length of Earth, thus realizing that their home was the journey, not a specific destination. Dick felt the same tendency. Yet, unlike his ancestors, Gotham became his homing beacon.

"Why do you stay?" Dick once asked his mentor. "Gotham killed your parents. You don't need to stay. You have money. You can move to Hawaii or Italy!"

Bruce's world-weary eyes found him. "I tried to leave. Gotham always clawed me back."

It was a labyrinth, Dick mused atop his building, one you could never leave. If people weren't so scared of the town, the horror movies industry would be based in Gotham, New Jersey. Here, your visa never expired before your pulse.

Dick hated staying stationary. He jumped again, this time more mindful of his older knees. Soon, he'd probably need another operation.

"That's what happens when you keep jumping around," one of his last lovers once scolded him. Lucia. Black lustrous hair fell to her shoulders; pulpous lips decorated her honest mouth; love shone in her dark eyes.

Being a doctor, she had a few too many questions about the rest of his injuries, especially the non-physical ones. "Stop lying, Dick. I can't take this anymore." She sighed. "At night, you scream in agony. When I wake you up, you say there's nothing wrong with you... And you smile, you know, the one you use as a diversion technique. I'm getting too old to play the game of pretending everything's all right." She left Dick alone in the bed that immediately felt too huge.

Dick listened to the police officers' radio. All's quiet. Eerily so for a town like Gotham. Maybe Barbs can finish her work without doing any overtime. She'd spend more time with her family.

Like most things nowadays, the sting of his past love was almost entirely gone. Versability had always been Dick's strength.

Not like the statuesque level of change Bruce had developed. Where Dick was the wind; Bruce was a hardened rock. They balanced one another in the field.

" _Batman_ ," Nightwing had once yelled in the dark where no lights ever reached. "I _hate_ you." The blackness that was his mentor hadn't receded; neither did it answer. Everpresent in its omniscience, Batman had disappeared in his lack of response; a black hole he had mastered over the years.

Dick copiously studied the silences and the mere twitches, chasing silhouettes to gauge the meaning of the contours of the absences. He theorized and drew his conclusions.

Bruce cares; he doesn't know how to show it.

Crusades after crusades, Dick fought his way through Bruce's beliefs. Again and again, they fell short of his hopes. Bloodied and battered, Dick retreated, sick with the pervading sensation this had only been a mistake.

Resenting his mentor was the easiest Dick had ever done in his life. The qualities Dick had formerly admired became obstacles he couldn't overwhelm; determination became obstinacy and inflexibility; consideration became secrecy; love became a means of manipulation; stoicism became indifference.

Vases once laid broken around the Manor, yet, Bruce's gaze offered no disappointment nor anger. Dick walked away first, as he was wont to do.

The first thing Dick had noticed of Bruce was the man's strong arms protecting him from harm a lifetime ago. The child had wept in the stranger's embrace. It was debt Dick could never repay.

Even at his most estranged, Dick couldn't erase the utmost gratitude he had once felt in Bruce's embrace. It bred hatred and contempt.

Dick learned the hard way that the more you hated Bruce, the more he had power over your life; the more you tried to escape his influence, the more you fell under his control.

Bruce had trained Dick for his never-ending war, a war Dick had never quite figured out. Was it a war on crime? On criminals? On pain? On death?

Dick remembered his mentor, pain etched in his soul, cradling a child in his powerless arms. Dick had secured the similarly nameless child in his arms as they went gently or noisily into the night. It was wrong; the world at odds with human morality, death at its undistilled presence.

Sometimes, Dick felt aligned with Bruce's most profound idealism, purpose on Earth, rebelling after the unjust and the devious.

Nowadays, Dick wanted nothing to do with his mentor.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for the kudos and comments! I hope you're all keeping yourselves safe and sane.


End file.
